This blog specializes in heavy metal music and how it relates to Washington DC and the surrounding area. Featuring info on upcoming metal concerts in Washington DC, Baltimore and Virginia, as well as info on local bands, area concert venues, reviews of live gigs, and lots of give aways.
DCHeavyMetal.com has a new ticket give away for the metal fans in the DC area! Up for grabs this time is a pair of tickets to see the most metal cello quartet in the world, Apocalyptica, play the 9:30 Club on Sunday 13 March 2011. Tell me what Apocalyptica song you’d like to hear them play at the show in the comments below to enter, cover songs are ok! I’ll randomly select a winner to get the tickets from all eligible entries at 5pm EST on Sunday 6 March 2011. Be sure to use a valid email address you check regularly when you enter (the email address does not have to be in the post itself) so that I can contact you if you win. If the winner does not respond within 24 hours I’ll pick another winner at 5pm the next day, and keep doing so until I get a winner. Don’t be a jerk and enter multiple times or I’ll disqualify all your entries. If you just can’t wait to get your tickets or the contest is already over when you read this, they’re available from Ticket Fly for $25 each here. There is also an opening act named Caverns that is playing, though I don’t know a whole lot about them.
Apocalyptica is a cello quartet from Finland that first gained notoriety with their first album, a collection of Metallica covers performed solely on four cellos that was released in 1996. They began composing their own material, still scattering cover songs by Metallica and various other bands such as Sepultura, Pantera, Rammstein and Faith No More into their albums. They also started playing with various drummers, including Dave Lombardo of Slayer and have had a few vocalists sing for them on certain original songs as well. I saw them play the 9:30 Club in 2008 (I shot this photo there) and their set covered all the different eras of Apocalyptica’s evolution. Some songs were performed with just the four cellos while some had a drummer and a few even had someone singing too. They played original songs as well as some cover songs and even did a heavy as shit rendition of In The Hall Of The Mountain King by Edward Grieg (I shot video of that and you can see it below). I don’t know what they’ll play this time around, but I’m sure it’ll be a great show regardless. And remember to tell your friends to enter too, since it’s a pair of tickets surely they’ll hook you up with the extra one for tipping them off about the contest when/if they win!
It’s not every day one of the “inner circle” bands from the infamous Norwegian black metal scene of the early 90s comes through the area, the last time was almost two years ago when Mayhem played Maryland Deathfest in 2009. So when Immortal came to Sonar on Sunday the 20th of February 2011 you just knew going in that it would be epic. To the best of my knowledge this was their first appearance in the area since I saw them play the now defunct Phantasmagoria record store in Wheaton, Maryland with Satyricon in March of 2000. They were only playing six concerts on this mini tour, and Baltimore was lucky enough to get one of them. They brought along Texas based black metal band Absu for the tour but there was no local support for this show.
Immortal has a certain duality in the metal scene, on one hand they’ve got a lot of credibility in the metal underground being that they’re one of the main second wave black metal bands, and through their band’s evolution they basically invented the blackened thrash subgenre of metal. That said, they’ve also been known to be one of the most ridiculous bands in black metal in regards to their image, laughable posing in photo shoots, things like witch hats and crab walks showing up in music videos, and a general willingness to embrace most of the idiotic image stereotypes of the black metal genre. Immortal has been called the Kiss of black metal but they’ve been able to keep a legion of fans by putting out albums with some damn good songs on them. Their original guitarist, Demonaz, had to leave the band due to severe tendinitis in 1997 and so bass player Abbath took over as guitarist. The band didn’t slow down until 2003 when they broke up for several years. They did get back together but they hadn’t played a concert in the mid-atlantic region since then until this evening.
When I got to the venue, about 10 minutes before the scheduled time for the doors to open, the line was already stretched around the block. All kinds of people from the local scene were there as well as people coming in from out of town and it sort of reminded me of when Carcass came to Sonar on their reunion tour in September 2008. Once inside I quickly staked out a spot as close to the front as I could and awaited Absu to start playing. I’d seen them in June 2009 at Jaxx but now they were a three piece, apparently this was just their second show as such. It didn’t hurt the fullness of the sound at all, but it did make it easier to see the band’s main man and lead vocalist, Proscriptor, play the drums. He’s quite a talented drummer with some unconventional drumming techniques that are pretty fun to watch live. For some unknown reason he had this sort of studded belt thing on as a headband, apparently some of Immortal’s image sense is rubbing off on him. He never dropped his “metal” voice while on stage even between songs and he kept the introductions entertaining too (check out his introduction to Four Crossed Wands in the video posted below to see what I mean). The band was in good form and was as good of a US based warm up act as there was going to be for Immortal though you could tell by the end of their set that the audience was ready for the reason they all came out this night.
Immortal sure took their time getting to the stage, finally arriving a good 45 minutes or so after Absu had finished. They played for at least 90 minutes and didn’t talk a whole lot between songs, but they didn’t really need to as their material stands on its own. Immortal was never one of the more political or religious of the Norwegian black metal bands, their lyrics mostly focusing on the fact that it’s damn cold in the north which isn’t really something to talk about between songs either. Their set list (photo of it here) had 14 songs and consisted mostly of songs from their latest two albums, 2009’s All Shall Fall and 2002’s Sons Of Northern Darkness. Totally awesome for the newer fans, but I was hoping they’d play a bit more off of Damned In Black and Blizzard Beasts. Still, it’s not like some bands where the newer material is just awful or something and considering how young a lot of the people in attendance were (at least up front where I was) it wasn’t surprising they’d play a lot of the newer material. The trio played very tight, the music was pretty energetic and the crowd went crazy from the beginning. When there were lulls in the music Abbath would strike a menacing pose and egg the crowd on by raising his arms and gesturing to keep the energy up. There were several crowd surfers throughout the night and during the song Grim And Frostbitten Kingdoms some dipshit threw a beer bottle on stage which caused the band to suddenly stop playing. Abbath got pissed and dared whoever threw it to come on stage, but they played on (I’ve got video of this below) and in fact seemed to have a renewed vigor through the rest of the song and into the next track, Withstand The Fall Of Time. They didn’t do any fire breathing on stage, which I was hoping for, but they did keep the corpse paint, leather, spikes and boots. There was a lot of fog used too, and Horgh, the drummer, was pushed so far to the back of the stage that you could hardly see him the entire night through all the fake smoke. He did not have his Satan’s Goalie Pads on though, haha. I really could have watched Immortal play another 14 songs but the show did end a bit after midnight after a pre-determined encore performance (hardly an encore when the songs are already on the setlist!).
It was a really fun show, and while Immortal didn’t play a ton of older material, it was still a bad ass concert. Absu was a great opening act too, though I wish they’d allowed a couple of the local black metal acts to open. I managed to work my way to the front row by the end of the show and got some photos that I’m really pleased with from there, and Abbath even posed a bit for me during their final song. You can see all my photos from this show on my Flickr page here. I also got 2 videos of Absu and 3 of Immortal that are all embedded below. The last video is the one with the beer bottle throwing incident, which happened about 1:20 in. Check them out and get ready for the next sure to be epic black metal show to come to the area, Rotting Christ, Melechesh and Hate playing Jaxx on March 9th. Oh yeah, and I’ve started a Facebook page for DCHeavyMetal so help me out and “like” the page (here) if you’re a fan of this site. Now, check out these cool videos.
So on Thursday the 17th of February 2011 the New Orleans based sludge act Eyehategod was coming to Sonar in Baltimore. I’m really not a huge fan of their albums, though they are influential in the sludge scene. I probably wouldn’t have gone but they were playing with a few bands I do really like, Misery Index, Magrudergrind and Cough specifically. Unfortunately the flyer for the show didn’t list the bands in the order they’d actually be playing and I ended up missing Cough, who apparently played first. Someone said they had played too long and so the rest of the show was being rushed. I did catch one of the local openers, Surroundings. They were ok I guess, pretty standard grindcore with a frontman that was really energetic, even crowd surfing during the set. The audience moshed for about a song or two at the beginning, but considering it’s grind that means about 30 seconds, haha. The next band to play was Strong Intention but I wasn’t really in the mood for hardcore so I went into the other room to have a couple beers and talk to people while they were playing. They do play the area a lot and I’m sure I’ll see them sooner or later though.
The next band to take the stage was Washington DC based grindcore act Magrudergrind. They made a stir last year when they gave their new album away for free (get it here) since the album was sponsored by Scion, a branch of Toyota. Apparently all the anti-corporate grind people took issue with this and so yeah, people were actually complaining about getting a free album. Anyways, I caught them last May at Maryland Deathfest, but this setting was a bit better to see them in I think, for one it wasn’t so crowded but it was also a local crowd so that was cool. Their set was fun, full of people jumping off the stage while the band played their spasmatic outbursts of DC grind. The main problem was they only played for 20 minutes! That kind of sucked, but was probably due to the time constraints the show was having.
Next up was the band I wanted to see the most, Misery Index. They’re from Maryland and the band was formed by ex-members of Dying Fetus. Only one of those guys are left in the band, and in fact this was the first show I had seen them play with their new guitarist, Darin Morris. Any fear I had of how the band would play with the line up change was quickly dispelled. As usual they played a very tight set showcasing their extremely brutal songs and even managing to play them faster live. Most of their set consisted of stuff from Heirs To Thievery, their latest album. They were told to stop playing at 12:20 am even though they had more songs left to play.
The headlining act, Eyehategod, is a band that I never really got into. Figured it was worth seeing them once though since ya know I run a metal site and all. They played a new song (video of that below) though they didn’t say its name. Their set was very downtuned and while I know plenty of people there were psyched to see them, it got monotonous to me after a while. I kept thinking that it was getting so late they’d have to end soon, but after thinking that for a few songs I checked the time around 1:45 and decided to call it a night even though they were still playing. As I said before I really was there to see the openers anyways. It sucks that their sets were all cut short after I drove up to Baltimore though! Anyways, I’ve got videos of the bands below, though most are dark the Eyehategod guys did have good lighting for me to shoot video in. The final song is their new one that I’d imagine will be on their next release, enjoy!
Washington DC’s own metalcore legends Darkest Hour are headlining a show at the 9:30 Club on Friday the 25th of February 2011 and DCHeavyMetal.com is giving away a pair of tickets to one of you lucky readers of the site. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post below telling me what local metal band you’d like to see headline the 9:30 Club next. Make sure you enter in a valid email address you check regularly when you submit your comment so I can contact you if you win, though it doesn’t need to be in the comment itself. On Friday, February 18th at 5pm EST the concert will close and I’ll select a winner at random from all the comments below to win the pair of tickets. If the winner doesn’t respond within 24 hours I’ll pick another winner Saturday the 19th at 5pm and continue to do so every 24 hours until there is a valid winner. Don’t be a jerk and enter multiple times or I’ll disqualify all your entries. Do be awesome and tell your friends about this contest.
Darkest Hour is touring with Born Of Osiris, As Blood Runs Black, The Human Abstract, and rumor has it DH guitarist Mike Schleibaum’s punk project Beasts Of No Nation will be opening for this show only. That’s just a rumor I’ve heard tho and it hasn’t been confirmed yet so don’t get mad if it doesn’t happen. This will be the first show of the Atticus Metal Tour III and will also be the first Darkest Hour concert after their new album, The Human Romance, is released on February 22nd. The doors open early for this show, 5pm to be exact, and the whole thing should be over by 10pm since there is another non-metal concert later the same night. If you can’t wait for the contest to end, or it’s already over when ya read this, you can get tickets from TicketFly for $15 each (before service fees) by going here. Now check out this new song, Your Everyday Disaster, from the upcoming album The Human Romance.
of Slayer and have had a few vocalists sing for them on certain original songs as well. I saw them play the 9:30 Club in 2008 (I shot this photo there) and their set covered all the different eras of Apocalyptica’s evolution. Some songs were performed with just the four cellos while some had a drummer and a few even had someone singing too. They played original songs as well as some cover songs and even did a heavy as shit rendition of In The Hall Of The Mountain King by Edward Grieg (I shot video of that and you can see it below). I don’t know what they’ll play this time around, but I’m sure it’ll be a great show regardless. And remember to tell your friends to enter too, since it’s a pair of tickets surely they’ll hook you up with the extra one for tipping them off about the contest when/if they win!
DCHeavyMetal.com 